Kemi Dessert Bar - Mooncake Packaging Illustration Process

I’m so excited that I got to collaborate with Kelly of Kemi Dessert Bar on packaging illustrations for her Mid-Autumn Festival mooncakes! Here’s what th process was like from initial sketches to final product.

I started with brainstorm sketches inspired by the Pinterest board that Kelly shared with me. I usually try to come up with three different directions for clients to choose from in the brainstorm sketch phase.

Above you can see on the left, my first sketch featuring an illustration that runs along two panels of the packaging with bunnies leaping around a mooncake with a slice cut out. The second on the top right has more of a mid-autumn festival pattern going across the front around a large moon. Finally, on the bottom right, there is the mooncake stack with a few bunnies hanging around it, which ended up being the winner!

The next step was to take the chosen concept to the next stage of creating the line art.

Next, I added color and got Kelly’s feedback on a couple variations.

She chose the smaller shadow and the starry sky, resulting in the final illustration below!

There was also this cute little spot illo for the back:

With the illustration finished, the next step was figuring out how it would all appear in it’s physical 3D form. I put together the print layout, decided which panels the illustrations would go on, and did some test prints on my home printer to make sure sizing and placement looked good IRL. The final print file in Adobe Illustrator looked like this:

I handed the file off to Kelly for printing, and here is the final design in action alongside it’s beautiful contents!

The mooncakes were delicious and the project was a dream – I loved getting to work on such playful and fun illustrations for a fellow small business owner. Looking forward to more collaborations in the future like this one!